Quotes, Sayings, and Proverbs

About Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era. He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.
Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was expected to become a preacher by his parents, but while at the University of Edinburgh he lost his Christian faith. Calvinist values, however, remained with him throughout his life. His combination of a religious temperament with loss of faith in traditional Christianity, made Carlyle's work appealing to many Victorians who were grappling with scientific and political changes that threatened the traditional social order. He brought a trenchant style to his social and political criticism and a complex literary style to works such as The French Revolution: A History. Dickens used Carlyle's work as a primary source for the events of the French Revolution in his novel A Tale of Two Cities.

If I say that Shakespeare is the greatest of intellects, I have
said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakespeare's
intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an
unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it that he himself
is aware of.

He who first shortened the labor of Copyists by device of Movable
Types was disbanding hired armies and cashiering most Kings and
Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had
invented the Art of printing.

To-day is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our Works
and Thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue
always the same? Change, indeed, is painful; yet ever needful;
and if Memory have its force and worth, so also has Hope.